LIPETSK — Now that their boss, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, has finally shaken hands with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the staff running the lone Russian factory in Poroshenko's chocolate empire can finally see better days ahead.

Since March, when Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and pro-Russian rebels rose up in eastern Ukraine, the Lipetsk Confectionary Factory has been raided by armed police, boycotted and accused by Russian politicians of supporting extremism.